Don't Leave It Unsaid
by fananicfan
Summary: This story shows us a way that could have changed the way season nine and ten went.


Don't Leave It Unsaid

Disclaimer: JAG and its characters are the property of Belisarius Productions, CBS and Paramount. No copyright infringement intended. Original characters, story ideas and story are the property of this author.

AN #1: I owe an apology to anyone who has emailed me and hasn't gotten a response. The PM system through me for a loop at first, but I think I have it figured out now and will do better to return PM's in a timely fashion.

STORY TIMELINE: This story begins in that hotel in Paraguay. You'll know the exact place from the slightly reconstructed line that begins the story before we go in a completely different direction. Of course, if it had really gone the way this story is written, the writers of the series would have had to have written Seasons Nine and Ten in a totally different way.

Don't Leave It Unsaid

"Riddle me this: Why would you resign your commission, travel five thousand miles and damn near get yourself killed to come here? "

"I think you know the reason."

"Harm, I've been through things these last couple of weeks that I don't even want to think about right now, and you want me to try to analyze what you might be thinking? I don't have it in me right now to dissect why you'd resign your commission, come here and risk your life to find me, but not act happy to see me and then bust my chops about Webb. And if all that weren't enough to process in my state, you have to go and tell me that someone's at the door, leave me a gun in case I need it, and then, out of the blue, say that you've forgotten how beautiful I am. So tell me, Harmon Rabb, if you were me, could you come up with a reason that made sense out of that information?" She sounds agitated, bordering on angry.

"I guess when you put it like that, it doesn't seem as clear as I see things, but I did tell you before you left that I didn't want you to go, and now look at what's happened. You kissed Webb…you don't understand me…what's next?" I reply with equal parts sarcasm and venom.

"You still haven't answered my question or given me a reason why you haven't. I don't have the energy to do this with you right now. In fact, I'm not doing this with you anymore at all, Harm." Her voice is more controlled now, but her growing anger is evident to me.

"Oh, you have enough energy to kiss Webb, but not talk to me?" I say without trying to mask my distaste for the visual that she gave me earlier.

"Is that really what this is about? Me kissing a man who endured torture trying to protect me and who told me that he did it because he cared about me? That's what has you acting this way?" Now she sounds hurt, and I prefer 'angry' to that.

"It wasn't like you just gave him a kiss on the cheek or a quick peck of gratitude on the lips, Mac." The words leave my mouth, and even I realize that I sound jealous.

"So you think so little of me that you think that I'd fall in love or into his bed because a man was being kind to me?" Her nostrils are flaring. I've got her more than a little steamed. She's downright pissed off at me, making her next words come out in huffed breaths. "Well, if that's what you think, maybe you're just angry because you haven't been kind to me." I think she's through, but a heartbeat later she speaks again. "And another thing, Rabb…" she spits out, making it clear how angry she is at me.

Her face is coming at me, and I don't know what's coming. I don't want to move. It would show a sign of weakness or fear, but I'm prepared to defend myself from whatever means of assault she has planned. Her face continues to move towards me until her lips make contact with mine." Her action renders me immobile and confused by her method of attack. The feel of her soft, full lips against mine leave me defenseless, and my eyes drift shut, not wanting to resist. 'What happened to the PO'D Marine?' is my thought as I put my arm around her waist, pull her slightly to me and begin to return her kiss, losing myself completely in the moment as I do.

Her lips pull from mine, and the look on her face mirrors how I feel inside. She's flustered, but I don't think that she'd ever admit it.

"For your information, that's a kiss that a woman would give a man if she'd slept with him or wanted him to know that she'd sleep with him if he were so inclined to woo her just a little. And that's not the way I kissed Clay, in case you couldn't tell the difference," she says in a tone that exudes victory. A moment later, she's getting off the bed and walking towards the door.

"Where are you going?" I ask.

"To see if they have another available room."

"Don't go. We need to talk," I plead as I get off the bed and move towards her.

"I'm all talked out, Harm."

I reach out and take the hand that she doesn't have on the doorknob. "Maybe that's because you were doing most of the talking. Maybe it's time I talked."

She releases the doorknob and turns to face me. I don't want to break eye contact to check, but, in the movies, her pose wouldn't be complete if she weren't tapping her foot. "I'm listening," she says.

"I don't know where to start—with the parts that I've left out of conversations in the past that would have left you no doubt as to why I resigned, flew five thousand miles and risked my life to find you, or by responding to the conversation that we were having a moment ago."

"Parts you left out in the past ... like what and when?" She sounds annoyed, but curious.

"In Sydney Harbor, the part that I left out before 'yet' was that I wasn't ready to start something with you and, after the 'yet,' I cut off my words so you never heard that I felt that I was carrying around too much baggage - not of your making - that I needed to deal with before starting anything with you."

"Baggage, you say, like what?" she asks.

I think she's testing me. I'm not sure if the test is if I'll answer her or if she thinks that I'm just making this stuff up as I go along, and she wants to delve into the subject matter so that she knows that it's something to which I've actually given some real thought.

"Like how I felt about the way I let my relationship with Jordan end. I wasn't fair to her. I needed to understand why I did that, because I wouldn't want to hurt you that way."

"And you had to give up flying again," she volunteers as another piece of my baggage.

She's thinking about what I'm saying. She's really listening to me. I can't blow this opportunity. I don't know that I can go all the way through to the 'I love you,' but I think I can make her see that I'd like to…what did she call it…woo her?

I train my eyes to a spot on her chin. I need to get started before I look her in the eye.

"Yes, and I'd given up flying again. I left voluntarily, but not completely by my choice, so it was a hard thing to walk away from. The first time, the dream was taken from me. I was walking away this time, but not necessarily because I was ready to let go. I was just too far behind the rest of the group. I wasn't going to catch up, I'd guess you could say. Leaving, no matter the reason, left me dealing with the death of a dream. If I'd really thought about it, it probably hurt more the second time because I knew that my father was dead, and giving up flying was another part of letting go of him. If I was going to start something with you, I knew that I needed to be free and clear of all of that so that I could give a relationship with you a fighting chance."

I make my first attempt to look into her eyes since I began and I see that moisture is causing her eyes to become glossy. I'm not trying to make her cry.

"I would've understood that you needed some time and space to deal with things. I would've been there for you. Why didn't you tell me that then?" The moisture I saw making her eyes shine a moment ago has started to pool in the corners of her eyes by her nose.

"There were so many reasons. I didn't want to talk about something that wouldn't give you a full grasp of the weight of what I was dealing with, but I didn't want to ruin the rest of our evening by being too serious…"

She cuts me off. "But, by not saying anything, I thought that you were gently telling me that 'it' wasn't going to happen, you know - letting me down easy."

I still have one of her hands in mine, and she places her other hand on mine and gently pulls me towards the table in the room. We reach the table where she sits down and motions for me to do the same while not letting go of my hand.

Once I've taken a seat, she says, "You said that there were other times when you left things out of what you said. Tell me about another time," she requests calmly.

"Let's move up through time to something in the not-so-distant past. When I spoke to you about our baby deal after you told me that the gift in your office was for little AJ's fifth birthday, when it was only going to be his fourth..." Again, I focus my gaze away from her eyes to begin. "...you asked me if I was afraid that you'd want to move up the timetable. I didn't respond to that, but I should have. I should've told you that I wasn't really afraid, more like nervous. 'Afraid' implies that I didn't want to have a child with you or that I was regretting making the deal and that I was fearful that you'd want to go through with it, but that wasn't it. I was nervous about having a baby with you out of the blue. But not only did I leave that unsaid, I also didn't say that I thought that, even if you didn't want to move up the timetable, it might be time to discuss how we wanted to make it happen. With a year left on the deal, wasn't it time to start talking about how we intended to have the baby? You know, discuss whether we were going to use medical means such as insemination, if we should start dating or if you just expected that, after little AJ's fifth birthday, one of us was supposed to show up at the other's place ready to make a baby."

"Which one were you hoping I'd say?"

"The medical method seemed to be the safest way to protect my heart. Having you show up at my place wearing nothing under your coat but your birthday suit would have been a fantasy come true. However, I wanted not only to be the father of your baby, but a dad. It seemed that, in order to have a mutually agreeable relationship with our child, we should be a couple for at least a little while before having it. So dating seemed to be the best idea."

"You've had a fantasy about my showing up wearing nothing under my coat and wanting your body?"

I'm feeling a little flushed. I didn't mean to confess my lustful thoughts to her, but since I have, I might as well admit that it isn't the only one that I've had. "Among other variations of the same theme."

I feel her eyes studying my face. "When I came to see you at your apartment before I ended up here in this mess, was there something after 'I don't want you to go Mac' that you didn't say?"

"Yes," I look into her eyes to speak. I want her to see that I'm being truthful and sincere. "I wanted to tell you that I'd been doing a lot of thinking and I didn't have it all worked out yet, but I was getting there - that I didn't want you to go because I had a bad feeling about your assignment and I wasn't in a position to deal with losing you…but I didn't say any of that because it sounded so selfish even to me as the sentences formed in my head. That isn't the way I meant it, but I didn't know what to say in place of that, so I said nothing, and you left."

"But you came here to find me. Did you have something to say to me, something that you'd left unsaid or didn't think that you were going to get to say?" she asks as the first of several tears begins to trickle down the side of her nose.

"I was having these nightmares that you weren't going to come back - that I was never going to see you again. When the admiral told me that you'd missed check-ins, my first thought was that I hadn't acted fast enough, because I'd been having those nightmares for days. I'd let you down. I needed to do something to fix that. I couldn't -" My thoughts freeze. I was about to say too much. I don't want this to look like some desperate attempt to soothe my conscience for not coming sooner.

Our hands are still clasped and resting on the table. I feel a gentle squeeze of my hand and make eye contact with her. Her eyes are a darker shade of brown than I ever remember seeing before.

"Don't leave it unsaid this time. Tell me what you're thinking or feeling. We can talk it through after you've said it if you think it comes out wrong, but please say it." Her tears have breached her defenses, so her voice is a little unsteady.

I open my mouth and close it once, twice, and then, in what I can only describe as divine intervention, words come out when I open my mouth for the third time. "After talking to the admiral, he wouldn't let me come here to find you any other way. He left me no choice. I had to resign because I had to do what I could to find you." I pause to take a breath. I don't know where those words came from, nor do I know what's going to come out next.

In my moment of silence she speaks, "This conversation seems to have a familiarity to it. You came to find me…or die trying."

"Yes," I answer softly, wondering what thoughts are running through her mind.

"I can't say that I completely understood your blind devotion to your father, which led you to go to such extremes to find him, but I understood the basic concept. You loved your father and, if it were within your power to do so, you wanted to bring him home. I know we're close, but why would you take the same extreme risk with your life for me?"

I'm silent while I mull over the two immediate responses to that question that have popped into my head. One thought is that, no matter how I see my future, I don't see it without her being in my life. The other answer is simpler. I love her, but it leaves my heart vulnerable to her.

I feel her tighten the grasp on my hand again as she repeats her words from a few moments ago. "Don't let it go unsaid." Her words bring me out of my momentary contemplative state to look at her once more as she continues to speak to me. "I've been through so much these past couple of weeks that I need to hear your answer. I need to know. I need to hear it."

As the last of her words fall off her tongue and waft through the air to my ears, the expression on her face and in her eyes changes. She said that she needed to hear it. That leads me to believe that she does know the reason. She just needs my reassurance. She needs to know that she'll have someone to help her face whatever physical and emotional fallout she goes through after we get home. She needs to know now if I'm willing to wait for her to be ready.

My mouth opens and, in what I can only describe as a leap of faith, the three words come out rushed, but clear. "I love you."

"Did you know that when you asked me at your apartment not to come on this assignment?"

I'm suddenly very nervous because she didn't acknowledge my declaration of love in any way, so my eyes dart away from hers. I can only manage to nod affirmatively to her question as I refocus my eyes on our still clasped hands resting on the table top.

"Why didn't you tell me then?"

With the embarrassment of my confession going without even a word of understanding or acceptance, I try to rein in my emotional side to pack it away once more. I will not let my guard down like this again with Sarah MacKenzie. "Need to know," I reply and, to start putting up the barriers that keep my heart safe from Sarah MacKenzie, I add, "That's a phrase that you'd better get used to hearing if you're going to be with Webb."

She stands and moves towards me. I turn in my chair to face her and tense to take what I feel is the inevitable slap to my face when she pulls her hand from mine for the first time since we started talking.

She's standing in front of me. I can't look her in the eye. I'm staring at her feet, which are in a position reminiscent of being in an 'at ease' stance. I've given her an advantage over me by letting her know how I feel. I can't look her in the eye until I've painstakingly replaced the older emotional barriers with new and stronger ones.

"Well, I guess I needed to know," she says firmly, and then her voice softens. "I won't lie to you. I don't know that it would have changed my coming here. I'd already given my word that I'd do it. I can say with certainty, though, that it would've been easier not to want to give into Sadiq and his men if I'd been able to think about what I had to go home to - if I'd known how you felt about me."

She places her hands on each side of my face and lifts my head slightly. She giggles. The giggling strikes me as a strange reaction to our current situation, so without thought, I lift my head the rest of the way, making eye contact with her.

"What's so funny?" I say sarcastically, figuring that her answer will be something like, 'I think it's funny that I've gotten Harmon Rabb to admit something to me that several other women that I'm aware of have wanted to hear, but I don't feel the same way about you. Ironic, isn't it?' Yeah, something like that is what she's going to say.

"I just had a thought that, if I'd known how you felt while I've been down here, I'd have been tortured in a different way."

I stand. "I get the idea, Mac - being with me is torture. Let's forget this whole thing and try to get some sleep!" I start to step around her.

"No," she firmly says, bringing me to a halt by grasping my forearm. I'm about to ask if she's saying no to sleeping or to me walking away before she's finished ripping out my heart, but I don't get a chance to say anything. Once my body's motion is halted, she begins to speak again. "Let me clear up my last statement. I meant that, knowing that you were there alone while I was here when we could have been together —that would've have been a different kind of torture." Her voice softens as my body relaxes at her clarification. "I think that would have been worse for me than listening to Clay scream in pain…to finally have no doubt about how you felt about me and not being able to see you, touch you or be with you."

I'm suddenly very uncomfortable with the turn of the conversation. It sounds like she wants to be with me, but she hasn't actually said so. 'Don't let her lure you in for a fall that you may not recover from' is my first thought. My next thought is, 'Defenses, you need your defenses in place. Don't look her in the eye.' I lower my eyes once more to the floor. 'Break physical contact,' I order myself. I lift my hand to remove hers from my forearm, but before I can do anything more than make contact with the back of her hand, the words that she's been uttering while I've been building my defense strategy finally register in my mind.

"I've been letting you do a lot of the talking tonight, but there's something that I don't want to leave unsaid another moment."

She didn't sound hostile. What could she want to say to me now?

"I love you, too."

I raise my head and venture a look at her face while wondering if the look on my face really conveys the shock I feel.

"After Sydney, I just couldn't bring myself to be the first one to say it. I'll let you plead worry and exhaustion, and forgive you for the accusations and shots about my being with Webb, if you'll forgive me for keeping quiet about how I felt about you for so long that you thought that he stood a chance with me."

My hand drops from covering hers as I agree by saying a single word. "Deal." That comes out of my mouth only a fraction of a second before my lips cover hers and my hands come to rest on her hips.

Her hands make their way to the back of my head as my arms snake around her. I pull her in closer, and she deepens the kiss. A few minutes later, the need for air causes our lips to part.

"If you'd kissed me like that before, I don't know that I could've walked away from you," she says breathlessly.

"Well, if you'd kissed me like that before, I would've known that you felt something for me sooner, and you would've been able to loosen my lips sooner on how I felt about you."

"Are we always going to be fighting about who's on top?"

"I won't fight you if you want to be on top," I say suggestively.

"Oh, so you want me to do all the work?"

"I guess I'll have to be on top then, at least for the first time."

"What makes you say that?" she asks with confusion.

"Because I'll have to show you that, if it's done right, it isn't work."

"When do I get my first lesson?"

"Whenever you want one."

"I think that we should get some sleep tonight, but when we get back to Washington, I think I should come over to your place where you can cook me dinner before you get to have your way with me."

"I'd love to have dinner with you."

A WEEK LATER

We spent a few more days in Paraguay finishing the mission. Each night at the hotel, we slept clothed, but close together in the center of the bed. Neither one of us wanted to talk about the nightmare that we'll always refer to simply as 'Paraguay,' if we discuss it at all. We don't want that to interfere with the dream of what finally being together is to both of us.

After a couple of days spent flying home and going through debriefing with the CIA, we were given two days to rest and recuperate before we have to face the admiral. So Mac and I have scheduled our first date tonight - I'm making her dinner – and our second date is scheduled for tomorrow night.

I hear a knock on the door and look at my watch. Yes, it's time. It has to be her.

I open the door and see that she's wearing a black trench coat, has her hair in an upswept do and is sporting a pair of red high heels, but her oversized bag doesn't fit the high-fashion look of the rest of her outfit.

"May I take your coat?" I ask.

"If you have an all clear from medical." I raise an eyebrow, giving her a questioning look. "My clothes are in my bag."

I swallow hard. "How hungry are you?" I ask. A strange question perhaps, but she understands.

"I've been waiting years for this evening. I can wait until we've finished dinner, if you can."

"I can, but…" I lose my train of thought when her hands start working on the knot in the belt tied at the waist of her coat.

"How does it happen in your fantasy, sailor?" she says in a seductive tone.

The ends of the belt fall away from each other as her hands move up to the top button of her coat. "Did you make a dinner that will keep on low?" she asks while she finishes unbuttoning the first button and moves on to the second. "Or will it reheat nicely?" she continues as the second button is undone. She pulls on the edges of the lapels, revealing a little bit of her skin, but nothing more than would show in a scooped neck top. However, the next button will reveal her breasts.

"I think we should heat…I mean 'eat' the dinner that I've prepared while it's still fresh." 'Fresh,' that wasn't the right word to use ... 'hot' would've been a better one.

She's smiling. She knows that she has one sexually frustrated man on her hands.

Her undressing has stopped. "Tonight, you're the teacher, so whatever you think is best."

I swallow hard again, wondering if the growth in my jeans will forgive me for having dinner first. So I'm not sure if my next line is to convince her or myself that eating dinner first is best. "I think that you should have a good meal first so that your body is properly fueled."

As I move about the kitchen, preparing to serve up our meal, she moves to the dining table and sits down at the table that I've adorned with a flower centerpiece and candlelight for our first date.

I have our meal served up in a couple of moments. I pick up a plate in each hand and start moving towards the table as she speaks.

"Tomorrow, when it's my turn to teach, I want you to know that I believe that it's a lot like any other exercise. You shouldn't do it on a full stomach. You have a good workout and then you replenish your body with a good meal."

"I suppose that would work, too," I say as I place her plate down in front of her, but in doing so, I've gotten a peek down into her open coat and have just seen a tiny glimpse of the top of her breasts, so I find myself gulping down a mouthful of air. My next words come out in puffs that resemble the choking sensation that swallowing my last breath caused. "But with my way, you don't have to get out of bed until morning."

"That's a good point. I may like your way better."

I don't think that I've chewed one bite of what I've put in my mouth, but it was worth it because dinner is over. I stand. "Let me take these plates to the kitchen," I say, wondering if it would be too forward of me to add - 'I can do dishes in the morning. Now get that coat off because I haven't been able to get the thought of you being naked under that coat off my mind.'

I take a deep breath while I turn, seeing that Mac has moved from the table to the bottom of the stairs leading to my bedroom and has her hands on the edges of her coat. She's unbuttoned the rest of the buttons. I know that my jaw has dropped open, but I can't seem to close it.

"I don't want to seem like too eager a student, but unless you think it's like swimming and you should wait an hour after you eat, I think we've both waited long enough." She pulls her coat open and, a moment later, drops it on the floor at the base of the steps.

I just stare at the beauty that's just been revealed to me, and then she turns and lifts her foot to take the first step up.

She's right - we've waited long enough. I make quick work of the distance between us, stripping my clothes off on the way and reaching the top of the steps only a moment after she does. She turns at the sound of my heavy steps coming up behind her and says, "Where do you want to start?"

I take her in my arms, and my lips crash onto hers. When our naked forms touch, there's instant relief for me that this isn't a dream. She's really here, and before this night is over, we'll have shared an evening that, up until now, has been only in my dreams.


End file.
